star of life," "We should always be kind to animals," and so on.
I wanted her to do her best. She gave the morning to it, and told
me at lunch that I was "synthetic." Probably you think that the
compositor has failed me here and printed "synthetic" when I
wrote "sympathetic." In just this way I misunderstood my
calligraphist at first, and I looked as sympathetic as I could.
However, she repeated "synthetic," so that there could be no
mistake. I begged her to tell me more, for I had thought that
every letter would reveal a secret, but all she would add was
"and not analytic." I went about for the rest of the day saying
proudly to myself "I am synthetic! I am synthetic! I am
synthetic!" and then I would add regretfully, "Alas, I am not
analytic!" I had no idea what it meant.

And how do you think she had deduced my syntheticness? Simply
from the fact that, to save time, I join some of my words
together. That isn't being synthetic, it is being in a hurry.
What she should have said was, "You are a busy man; your life is
one constant whirl; and probably you are of excellent moral
character and kind to animals." Then one would feel that one did
not write in vain.

My pen is getting tired; it has lost its first fair youth.
However, I can still go on. I was at school with a boy whose
uncle made nibs. If you detect traces of erudition in this
article, of which any decent man might be expected to be
innocent, I owe it to that boy. He once told me how many nibs his
uncle made in a year; luckily I have forgotten. Thousands,
probably. Every term that boy came back with a hundred of them;
one expected him to be very busy. After all, if you haven't the